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Murder at the Christmas Bed and Breakfast A Miss Marple Mystery · Miss Marple Mystery

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Murder at the Christmas Bed and Breakfast. 1. A Miss
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Marple mystery. Gas geyser in a Norfolk guesthouse gives four
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: hot baths of a morning and not one more, and
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: every guest under that snow-bound roof knows it to the minute.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: That is the sort of fact that seems too small
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: to matter until a woman is found dead in her
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: bed of what looks like her heart, and the geyser's ledger, cold, mechanical,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: indifferent to grief, turns out to have counted five bathers
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: where there ought to have been four. Eight strangers sat
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: down to Christmas dinner at Coldhaven that year, with the
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  Speaker 1: drifts piled to the sills and the last bus gone
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  Speaker 1: until the roads were cleared. Every one of them was
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: keeping something back. Only one of them was keeping back
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: a murder. I wonder, this Christmas, whether your own house
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: keeps a small mechanical honesty of its own, a boiler
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: that only stretches so far.' a kettle that only fills
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  Speaker 1: so many cups, a larder that only holds so much
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  Speaker 1: before someone notices what has gone? Has a little arithmetic
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: of that kind ever caught you out, or caught out
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: someone you loved? Do you keep a house full of
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: guests over the holiday, and do you count the baths,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: so to speak, without quite meaning to? Write and tell
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  Speaker 1: me I read every one. Somewhere behind a guesthouse wall
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Two voices are already quarrelling, badly, about who has used
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  Speaker 1: all the hot water, and neither of them yet knows
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  Speaker 1: how much that quarrel is about to matter. 1. Chapter 1.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: The Last Bus to Coldhaven. The snow began outside Sheringham,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: and did not stop until Coldhaven had disappeared behind it entirely,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: so that when the bus finally groaned to a halt
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: at the top of the lane, Miss Marple could see
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: nothing of the house at all, only a paler patch
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  Speaker 1: of white, where its roof must be, and a single window,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: lit gold, hanging in the dark like a lantern someone
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: had forgotten to bring in. This is as far as
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: she'll go, the driver said, meaning the bus, and meaning
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: it kindly, as if the vehicle had done its best,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: and no one should think worse of her for giving
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: out three-quarters of a mile short of the door. There
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: were six of them left aboard by then, the rest
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: having got down at Cromer and points before, and they
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: climbed out one after another, into snow that came over
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: the tops of their shoes, exclaiming in the particular put-upon
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: voices of English travellers who have paid in advance and
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: mean to enjoy themselves regardless. Miss Marple exclaimed rather less
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: than the others. She had spent eighty years learning that
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: weather did what it liked, and complaining changed nothing but
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: one's temper. A boy came up from the house with
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: a hurricane lamp and an expression of long-suffering, and led
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: them down through drifts that squeaked underfoot. and so they came,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: by ones and twos, stamping and blowing, into the hall
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: of Coldhaven, where a fire was going, and the smell
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  Speaker 1: of it, applewood, and under that something savoury from the kitchen,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and under that the faint mineral smell of a house
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: too near the sea, closed over Miss Marple like a
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: good coat. Mrs. Pargeter. The landlady came forward with her
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: hands already out for coats, a broad, capable woman, with
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: a face that had settled a long time ago into
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: an expression of managing. You'll all want tea before anything. Ivy,
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  Speaker 1: tea in the lounge. There were introductions of the sort
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: that happen in halls, half heard, half remembered, names offered
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: over the business of unwinding scarves. Miss Marple gathered them,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: as a woman gathers wool, without appearing to try. The tall,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: thin clergyman was a Mr. Frayne, and he had the look,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: she thought, of a man carrying something heavier than his
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: own case. The young married pair, Quill was it, stood
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  Speaker 1: very close together and laughed rather too readily at nothing
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  Speaker 1: in particular, the way people do when they are anxious
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  Speaker 1: about something and have agreed between themselves not to say so.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Two sisters, unmistakably sisters by the shape of their noses,
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  Speaker 1: called Herrick, arranged themselves at once into the two chairs
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  Speaker 1: nearest the fire without discussing which should have which, from
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: long practice, a stout commercial gentleman named Knott shook everyone's
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  Speaker 1: hand and produced, before his coat was fully off, a
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: small tin of something he described as wonderfully settling for
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: the stomach after travel, which nobody accepted, and there was
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: a fair, well-set-up man of about forty-four who gave his
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: name as Loader, and who smiled at everyone and with
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: the particular warmth of a man who has decided in
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: advance to be liked.' Miss Marple!' Mrs. Pargeter turned to
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  Speaker 1: her last, as landladies often did, elderly ladies travelling alone
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: being neither trouble nor profit, and therefore easily forgotten in
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: a doorway.' You' ll be in the blue room, at the top.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: It catches the sun, what there is of it.'' Thank you,'
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple.' I am sure I shall be very comfortable.'
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: She said it in the mild, pleased voice she used
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: for hotels, boarding-houses, and other people's kitchens, a voice that
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: made landladies relax without quite knowing why, and she looked
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: about the hall with an old woman's unhurried interest, at
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: the barometer stuck fast at change, at the row of coat-pegs,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: at a wall calendar three months out of date, at
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: a brass gong nobody had struck in years by the
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: look of its dust. She had come to Coldhaven, if
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: anyone had asked her, and nobody did, because nobody thinks
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: to ask an old lady why she has gone anywhere,
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  Speaker 1: because her nephew Raymond had insisted she was working herself
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: into a decline over Christmas at home, doing for the
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: vicar's charities what the vicar's wife ought to have been doing,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: and had more or less posted her here himself, with
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: the bill paid and a note enclosed that said only, Rest.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: No committees are. She had come meaning to do exactly that.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: She had brought two novels, a quantity of knitting wool
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  Speaker 1: the colour of a winter sea, and no expectation whatever
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: of anything happening. There was, however, one more guest to
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: be introduced, and she came down the stair as the
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: tea-things arrived, a handsome woman of about sixty, in good
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: tweed and better pearls, with the particular carrying voice of
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: someone accustomed to being listened to.' Mrs. Vance,' said Mrs. Pargeter,'
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  Speaker 1: our earliest arrival. She's been with us since Monday.'' And
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: glad of the company at last,' said Mrs. Vance, seating
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: herself where the firelight would show her pearls to advantage.'
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: One does get restless, alone in a house full of strangers,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: though I dare say we shan't be strangers long.' Her
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  Speaker 1: eye went round the room as she said it, resting
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  Speaker 1: on each face for a fraction longer than politeness required.
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  Speaker 1: and it seemed to Miss Marple, though she could not
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: at that stage have said why, that two or three
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: of the faces it rested on went very slightly still.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Tea was excellent, strong, and with a seed-cake that Mrs.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Pargeter admitted, when pressed, to having made herself. Talk ran
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: on the snow, the state of the roads, the wireless forecast,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: which promised no relief before the new year. Mr. Knott
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: told a long story about a snow-bound Christmas in Lincolnshire,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: which nobody had asked for, and which ended, somehow, in
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: a sales pitch for his stomach powders. The Herrick sisters disagreed,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: gently and at length, about whether the fire wanted another log. Mr.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Loder was attentive to everyone, laughed easily, and twice, Miss
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Marple noticed, glanced toward Mrs. Vance with an expression that
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: was not quite the expression a stranger wears toward a stranger.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: You've met before, I think, said Miss Marple, to no
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: one in particular, in the comfortable murmuring tone of an
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  Speaker 1: old woman, making conversation rather than an accusation. Have we?
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: said Mrs. Vance, with a short laugh. I don't believe so.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Though one meets so many people at bridge tournaments, one
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: forgets faces dreadfully. I expect that's it. Miss Marple agreed,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: and took another piece of cake, and said nothing further.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: But she had seen, before the words were out of Mrs.
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  Speaker 1: Vance's mouth, that Mr. Loder's hand had gone, for the
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  Speaker 1: smallest instant, to the stud at his collar, and touched
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  Speaker 1: it twice, and come away again, as a man's hand
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  Speaker 1: does when he has just told a lie he has
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  Speaker 1: told many times before, and finds it a little more
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  Speaker 1: tiring on each occasion. By seven the wind had risen
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  Speaker 1: properly and was throwing snow against the windows in handfuls,
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  Speaker 1: like gravel. Walter Pargeter came through to build up the
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: fire and remarked, to nobody, that the geyser would want
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  Speaker 1: lighting early if everyone wanted a bath before breakfast, seeing
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: as it only ran to four before the water went
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  Speaker 1: cold on you, and there being eight of them now
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  Speaker 1: besides himself and the missus. Only four, said young Mrs. Quill,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: and there was something in the quickness of her questions
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: some private arithmetic of her own, that made her husband
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: put a hand briefly on her arm.' Four good hot ones,'
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: said Walter, with the pride of a man who has
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  Speaker 1: kept the same geyser going for eleven years and does
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  Speaker 1: not intend to apologize for its limits. After that, it's
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  Speaker 1: your own lookout.'' Then we shall have to draw lots,'
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  Speaker 1: said Mr. Loder pleasantly,' or take it in strict order
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  Speaker 1: of age, like a school treat.' And everyone laughed. and
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: the matter of the bathwater passed, for that evening, into
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: the general small talk of a house settling in for
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  Speaker 1: the night. A joke, nothing. more. The kind of thing
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  Speaker 1: that is repeated at breakfast for a day or two,
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  Speaker 1: and then forgotten. Miss Marple did not forget it. She
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: had lived a great many years in a great many houses,
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  Speaker 1: and she had learned that the things people joke about
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  Speaker 1: on the first evening are very often the things that
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  Speaker 1: matter most by the last. Two Chapter Two Four Baths
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  Speaker 1: and a Ledger Christmas Eve at Coldhaven passed, as such
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  Speaker 1: days do, in a texture of small business. Holly fetched
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  Speaker 1: in from somewhere, a tree got up in the lounge
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  Speaker 1: and hung with paper chains, the Herrick sisters remembered from
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  Speaker 1: thirty Christmases before. A walk taken by the hardier guests
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: down to look at the frozen edge of the sea,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: and abandoned after ten minutes for the cold. Miss Marple
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: sat by the window with her knitting and and watched
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: the house the way she had once watched St. Mary
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  Speaker 1: Mead from her own front parlour, not staring, never staring,
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  Speaker 1: simply present, the needles going, the eyes taking their time
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: about everything. She noticed that Mrs. Vance kept a small
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: brass-cornered writing-desk in the corner of the lounge, locked at
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: all times, and that she carried the key to it
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: on a ribbon inside her blouse. In the manner of
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: a woman who has once had something stolen, and does
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: not intend it to happen twice. She noticed that Mr.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Loder was the only guest who had brought no photographs
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: to stand on his mantle, though the others had, the
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  Speaker 1: quills a wedding portrait, Mr. Frayne a faded snap of
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: a woman who was presumably his mother, Mr. Knott an
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: entire fan of nephews and nieces propped against his shaving-glass,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: which he showed to anyone who would look. She noticed, too,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: the geyser, because everyone noticed the geyser. It had become
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: by Christmas Eve the house's chief topic after the weather.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: It stood in a cupboard off the bathroom landing, a
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  Speaker 1: squat brown thing with a pilot flame and a dial,
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  Speaker 1: and Walter Pargeter lit it each morning at half-past six
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  Speaker 1: so that it should be properly hot by seven, and
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: it gave— everyone now knew this as a fact of nature,
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  Speaker 1: the way one knows the tide— four good hot baths, run
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: one after another, before the water coming through went cold,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: and stayed cold until the following morning. It's the size
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: of the tank, Walter explained to Mr. Frayne over breakfast,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: with the patient thoroughness of a man asked to explain
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: something he has explained a hundred times. Four tankfuls hot,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: and then she wants an hour to build up again,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: and nobody wants to wait an hour of a morning,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: so it's four and no more, and I run a
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: chalk mark on the cupboard door each morning so there's
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: no argument about who's had one and who hasn't. How
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: very organised, said Mrs. Vance, from behind her newspaper, in
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: a voice that suggested she found the organisation faintly comic.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: One feels quite at a spa, baths by appointment. There's
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: some as have two baths a day at home and
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: can't do without, said Walter, with a glance that took in,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: though he could not have said why, young Mr. Quill,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: who had gone rather red and become extremely interested in
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: his toast, and there's some as manage on one a week,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: and think nothing of it. It's not for me to
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: say which is right. It's only the tank has says
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: how many, and the tank don't argue. Miss Marple, buttering
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: her own toast with the unhurried thoroughness of a woman
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: for whom breakfast was one of the day's few uncontested pleasures,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: thought that Walter Pargeter had, without in the least intending it,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: said something rather profound about human nature, and filed it
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: away with the rest. The Morning Post what there was
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: of it, the roads being what they were, brought Mrs.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Vance a single letter, which she read at the table
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: with no attempt to hide her satisfaction, and then folded twice,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: and put away inside her blouse with the key. Good news?
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: asked Miss Constance Herrick, who read other people's correspondence upside
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: down as a matter of habit, and had got nothing
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: from this one but the postmark, which was London. Very
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: good news, said Mrs. Vance, for me, and smiled in
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: a way that included nobody else in the pleasure, and
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: went on with her egg. It was after this exchange,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple noted privately, that Mr. Loder excused himself rather
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: suddenly from the table, on the grounds of fetching a muffler,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: and did not come down again for the better part
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: of twenty minutes. And it was in that same twenty
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: minutes that Mrs. Vance, humming, went to the little desk
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: in the lounge, unlocked it with the key from her blouse,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: and added the new letter to whatever else lived inside,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: before locking it again and dropping the key back beneath
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: her collar with the satisfied air of a woman putting
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: money safely into a bank. Nobody else appeared to remark
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: any of this. The quills were occupied with a jigsaw
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: somebody had left from a previous season, missing, as jigsaws
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: in guest houses always are, one crucial piece of sky. Mr.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Knott had cornered the vicar and was outlining, at length,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: the medicinal properties of a powder he called Knott's Nerve Tonic,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: a name he pronounced with evident pride in his own cleverness.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: The Herrick sisters were disagreeing, amiably, about whether it would
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: snow again before nightfall. Miss Marple went on with her
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: knitting and thought about locked desks and keys worn against
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: the skins and letters that brought good news to one person, and,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: very plainly, to nobody else in the room. And she thought,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: not for the first time in her long life, that
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: a guesthouse over Christmas was a very good deal like
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: a village, only compressed, the way a drop of pond
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: water under a magnifying glass shows you, in miniature, and
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: moving very fast, everything a whole pond can hold. That
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: evening— At the request of the younger guests, there was
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: a little singing round the piano, which Mrs. Pargeter played creditably,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: if without much feeling, and a good deal of sherry,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: and Mr. Loder was in excellent spirits, and told a
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: story about a client of his, who had insured a
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: prize marrow against Frost, and lost the claim on a technicality,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: which made everybody laugh, Mrs. Vance loudest of all.' You
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: have a gift for stories, Mr. Loder,' she said. when
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: the laughter had died down, looking at him over her
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: glass with an expression Miss Marple could not quite read,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: though she thought it was not entirely friendly. One might
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: almost think you'd had practice inventing them. One does pick
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: things up in insurance, said Mr. Loder easily, and refilled
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: her glass himself, and the moment, if it was a moment, passed.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: But his hand, Miss Marple noticed, was not quite steady
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: on the decanter, and afterward, he sat a little apart
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: from the fire, as though he had grown suddenly and
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: privately cold. 3. Chapter 3. The guest who did not
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: come down, Christmas morning at Coldhaven began, as it had
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: begun for eleven years, with Walter Pargeter going along the
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: landing at half-past six to light the geyser, and it
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: should have gone on, as it always had, with four
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: baths drawn, in whatever order the guests could agree upon
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: among themselves, and breakfast at nine, and church for those
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: who wanted it, though the roads made church impossible that year,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: and Mr. Frayne read a short service in the lounge instead,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: to which everyone came out of politeness, and one or two,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple thought, out of something more. It did not
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: go on as it should have, because Mrs. Vance did
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: not come down. Nobody thought much of it at first.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Ivy took up a can of hot water at half-past eight,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: as she did for guests who preferred it to the
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: bathroom queue, knocked and got no answer, and thought Mrs.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Vance still asleep, being Christmas morning, and went away again
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: without troubling her, which was exactly what a well-trained girl
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: of nineteen ought to have done, and exactly what she
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: would spend the rest of that week wishing she had not.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: It was Miss Beatrice Herrick, going up for her handkerchief
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: before the service, who knocked again at half-past ten, more sharply,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: and then tried the handle, and found it unlocked, and
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: put her head round the door to say that they
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: were starting downstairs, and came out again a moment later
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: with a face the colour of the snow outside, and
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: could not, for nearly a minute, say anything at all. Mrs.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Vance lay on her back in the bed, quite composed,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: her hands folded on the coverlet as though she had
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: arranged them so herself, her face a colour that Miss Marple,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: coming up the stairs behind Mrs. Pargeter, with the quiet
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: swiftness of a woman who has seen death before and
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: does not waste time exclaiming over it, recognized at once
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: and did not like. Her heart, said Mrs. Pargeter, after
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: a moment, in the flat voice of someone reaching for
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: the least frightening explanation available. She did say, only yesterday,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: that the stairs winded her something dreadful. Perhaps, said Miss Marple,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: she did not touch anything. She stood a little back
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: from the bed, her hands folded in front of her,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: exactly as Mrs. Vance's were folded on the coverlet, and looked,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: not at the face, but at the room, at the window,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: shut and latched from the inside, at the little desk key,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: still on its ribbon, but lying now on the nightstand,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: rather than beneath the collar of the nightgown, as though
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: it had been taken off, or taken, in the night,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: at a faint dampness on the pillow, no more than
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: a guesthouse pillow damp with an old woman's ordinary night
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: sweats might show, except that Miss Marple, who had nursed
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: a good many people in her time, knew the particular
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: kind of dampness that comes from something pressed hard and held.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: We must send for Dr. Hiley, she said. And for
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: the police, I think, Mrs. Pargeter, though I am sorry
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: to say it on Christmas morning, and something in the
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: mildness with which she said it, the entire absence of drama,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: made Mrs. Pargeter look at her properly for the first
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: time since they had come up the stairs. You don't think, Mrs.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Pargeter began, and did not finish. I think we ought
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: to let the doctor say what he thinks, said Miss Marple,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: and not guess ahead of him. but I should be
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: glad if nobody touched the window, or the key on
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: the nightstand, or anything else in the room, until he
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: has been. The doctor could not come until past two,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: the roads being what they were, and came at last
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: on a farm sledge with his bag lashed to the
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: seat beside him, a brisk youngish man named Hiley, who
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: examined the room and the body with a thoroughness that
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: made the assembled guests, waiting below in a hall gone
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: very quiet, understand before he had said a word, that Mrs.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Pargeter's hopeful diagnosis of the heart was not going to
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: survive the morning. I shan't commit myself until the post-mortem,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: he said, coming down at last, stamping snow from his
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: boots with unnecessary vigour, a man's way of putting off
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: a difficult sentence. But I'll say this much for now.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: That is not what a heart looks like. There's bruising
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: about the mouth and the underside of the jaw that
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: a weak heart doesn't leave, and I'd want to know
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: a good deal more about that pillow before I signed anything.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: The word went round the sitting guests like a draft
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: under a door. Mr. Knott said, Good God, twice, in
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: slightly different tones. Mr. Frayne went very white and said
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: nothing at all. The quills held hands, tightly, without appearing
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: to notice they were doing it. Miss Constance Herrick began,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: and was hushed by her sister, an account of a
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: very similar case she had read about in the newspaper
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: only that autumn. Mr. Loder poured himself a whisky, which
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: nobody remarked on at the time, it being Christmas, and
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Christmas having lately acquired excellent reasons for a stiff drink,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: but which Miss Marple, sitting quietly in her corner with
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: her knitting untouched in her lap, noted all the same,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: along with the fact that his hand, pouring it, was
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: noticeably cold to the eye, reddened at the knuckle, the
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: way hands go after a bath taken in water that
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: has not been properly hot.' You' ve been out in the weather, Mr. Loader,'
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: she said, in her mild way, when he had sat
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: down near her, perhaps because her corner was quiet, and
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: he wanted quiet.' Only up to fetch my muffler again,'
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: he said, with a short laugh that did not reach
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: as far as his eyes.' One forgets, in a house
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: like this,' How cold the passages get! One does, Miss
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Marple agreed, and returned to her knitting, and said nothing
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: about the fact that his hair, at the temple, still
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: carried the particular flattened dampness of a man recently and
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: hastily bathed. Nor about the fact that when Walter Pargeter
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: had come through earlier, grim-faced, to say there'd be no
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: service that morning after all under the circumstances, he had added,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: almost as an aside, that he'd found five chalk marks
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: on the geyser cupboard door that morning instead of the
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: usual four, and couldn't for the life of him think
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: how he'd come to make the mistake, him being that
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: careful as a rule. It was not, Miss Marple thought,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: watching the fire and appearing to think of nothing at all,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the sort of mistake Walter Pargeter was in the habit
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: of making. The local constable arrived by early evening, a large,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: unhurried man named Digweed, who took statements with the air
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: of someone filling in a form he had filled in
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: a hundred times before for burglaries and poaching, and once, memorably,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: for a runaway bull, and who plainly regarded the doctor's
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: suspicions as a great deal of fuss for Christmas Day.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: He would, he said, be sending for the inspector from
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Cromer the moment the roads allowed it, and in the
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: meantime nobody was to leave the house, which nobody had
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: the smallest intention of doing, the drifts outside being by
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: now higher than the garden wall. Miss Marple, going up
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: to bed that night past the geyser cupboard, paused for
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: a moment before it shut door, and thought about four
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: hot baths, and a chalk mark that made five, and
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: a key that had travelled from a woman's throat to
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: her nightstand sometime between half-past eight and half-past ten on
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: a Christmas morning. And she thought, not for the last
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: time that week, of a boy she had known a
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: very long time ago in St. Mary Mead, though she
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: could not yet have said why he came to mind,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: only that he did, standing at the edge of her thoughts,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: the way a name stands at the edge of the tongue,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: not yet ready to be spoken. 4. CHAPTER 4. INSPECTOR
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: REEVE TAKES NAMES The inspector reached Coldhaven on the 27th,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: by which time the road had been dug clear as
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: far as the crossroads, and no further. and he came
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: the rest of the way on foot, with a sergeant,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: and a face already set for a difficult case. Having
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: been told over a crackling telephone line that a houseful
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: of eight strangers had spent two days establishing alibis for
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: one another over card games and sherry, which was, as
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: he remarked to his sergeant within Miss Marple's hearing, about
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: as much use as no alibis at all, Inspector Reeve
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: was a compact, sandy man of about fifty who had
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: the manner, Miss Marple thought, of someone permanently a little
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: tired and a little impatient with people who had not
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: troubled to be murdered somewhere more convenient. He set up
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: his interviews in the small morning-room with the sergeant taking notes,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: and worked through the household in an order of his
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: own choosing that began, to everyone's surprise, not with the guests,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: but with Walter Pargeter and his geyser. You're telling me,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: said Reeve, not for the first time, that this contraption
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: of yours only runs to four baths a morning, and
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: that on Christmas morning, the very morning the lady died,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: it ran to five. That's what the chalk says, said Walter, unhappily.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: He had brought the cupboard door itself, more or less,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: having chalked a fresh mark on a spare board to demonstrate,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: and stood turning it over in his hands, like a
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: man asked to explain a conjuring trick he had not
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: performed and did not understand. I mark it myself each morning,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: first thing, and rub it off each night, so there's
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: no confusion day to day. Four's what she gives, sir,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: regular as the tide, on account of the tank size,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: and four's what I marked up to and including breakfast.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: same as always, and then along about half nine I
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: went up again for something and found a fifth mark
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: chalked under my fore, in my own chalk, same stub,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: lying right there on the shelf where I leave it.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Now I never make a fifth mark. I know when
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: the water's gone cold same as anyone, and there's no
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: earthly sense making a mark for a bath that couldn't
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: have been properly hot. Unless, said Miss Marple, who had
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: not been asked to be present, but had somehow arrived
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: in the doorway with her knitting, and had not yet
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: been asked to leave, someone bathed in water that was
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: not properly hot, and wished it recorded as though it
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: had been. Reeve looked at her with the particular weariness
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: of a policeman confronted, in a case already complicated enough,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: with an elderly lady he has not yet decided whether
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: to take seriously. And why, he said, with careful patience,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Would anyone chalk up a bath they hadn't had the
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: benefit of?'' I couldn't say,' said Miss Marple,' why anyone
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: would want it thought they'd bathed early in cold water
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: rather than not at all. Unless, of course, they had
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: bathed and simply not troubled about the temperature, being in
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: rather a hurry, and had chalked the mark themselves out
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: of habit, the way one does things by rote when
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: one is not thinking clearly, and is thinking instead about
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: something else entirely.' There was a short silence.' in which
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Walter Pargeter looked from the old lady to the inspector,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: and back again, with the expression of a man watching
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: a hand of cards being laid down, that he does
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: not fully understand, but suspects is important.' That' ll do for now, Mr. Pargeter,'
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: said Reeve, and when Walter had gone, added, to Miss Marple,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: not unkindly,' You' ve a theory, ma'am.'' I have an arithmetic,'
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple,' which is not quite the same thing, inspector.'
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: though it sometimes leads to one. Four guests will tell you,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: quite truthfully, that they had a hot bath that morning.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: That is four marks honestly earned. The fifth mark was
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: made by somebody, and it was made, I think, not
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: by Walter, who is far too careful a man to
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: make such a mistake twice running, let alone once, and
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: he did not make it once before, in eleven years,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: or he would have said so. So it was made
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: by a guest. in the guest's own hand or close
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: enough to pass for it, using Walter's own chalk, which
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: was lying on the shelf for anyone to pick up.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: And a guest does not trouble to make a false
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: mark for a bath he has not had. He troubles
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: to make it for a bath he has had, in
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: water that had already gone cold, because he did not
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: want it thought unusual that he should have bathed so early,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: on a morning when everybody else was still asleep, And why,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: said Reeve, would a man want a bath so early
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: that the water had gone cold on him? Miss Marple
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: did not answer that directly. She looked instead, mildly, out
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: of the small window at the snow, and said, When
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: I was a girl in St. Mary Mead, there was
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: a young man, a gardener's boy, called Tom Hedley, who
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: used to go out very early on winter mornings, before
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: anyone else was up, you understand. and it was put
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: about that he went for the exercise, being a restless
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: sort of boy. It was old Mrs. Latimer who worked out,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: quite by accident, that he was not exercising at all,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: because the only water-butt on the estate that was ever
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: found broken with ice in the mornings was the one
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: nearest his cottage, and no other, though the frost lay
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: just as hard on all of them. He was washing
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: his boots, you see, and his hands, before anyone else
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: came out to see what state they were in. He
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: had been at Farmer Coates's coops in the night, poor boy,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: and thought no one the wiser, and it was the
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: one broken skin of ice, out of a dozen untouched ones,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: that gave him quite away. She paused. I don't say
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: it is at all the same sort of trouble here, Inspector,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: only that people wash, early, alone, when they do not
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: want it seen what they have been doing in the night,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: and that a bath taken for that reason has a
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: particular hurry to it, that a bath taken for pleasure
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: does not. Reeve regarded her for a long moment, and
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: then turned to the sergeant. Get Mr. Loder in next,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: he said, and it seemed to Miss Marple, though she
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: could not have sworn to it, that he had reached
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: the name a very little sooner for having listened to her. Mr.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Loder came in pleasant and unhurried, sat where he was
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: told to sit, and answered the inspector's questions about his
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: acquaintance with the dead woman in a voice of easy regret.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: A slight acquaintance only, met perhaps once or twice at Bridge,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: nothing more, until Reeve, consulting a paper the sergeant had
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: handed him, said, without any particular emphasis, Your firm has
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: you down as Ivo Bradstock until 1938, Mr. Loder. Any
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: reason for the change of name? It was very quickly done,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: and very well done, but Miss Marple, watching from her
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: chair by the door with the interest of a woman
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: who has spent a great many afternoons watching people's hands,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: rather than their faces, saw two fingers go up to
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: the collar stud and touch it and come away. A
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: man may change his name for a dozen reasons that
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: have nothing to do with murder, Inspector, said Mr. Loder, smiling.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: He may, agreed Reeve. I'd be glad to hear yours,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: all the same. 5. Chapter 5. Questions over tea. The
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: house settled. Over the next two days, into the peculiar
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: rhythm of a place where a murder has happened and
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: ordinary life is nonetheless obliged to continue around it. Meals
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: were served, the fire was kept up, someone dealt a
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: hand of cards each evening because it seemed less alarming
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: than sitting in silence, and underneath all of it ran
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: the low, constant hum of eight people watching one another
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: and pretending not to. Miss Marple took her tea. as
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: she generally did, in whatever corner offered the best view
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: of the room without appearing to seek one, and found
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: that her age and her manner, mild, a little deaf
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: when it suited her, endlessly willing to discuss the weather,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: made her, as they had made her in a great
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: many drawing-rooms before this one, entirely invisible to people with
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: something to hide, which suited her very well indeed.' It' s
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: a wicked shame,' said Mr. Knott. settling beside her with
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: the confiding air of a commercial traveller who regards conversation
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: as a professional skill. Spoiling everybody's Christmas like this. I
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: don't mind telling you, Miss Marple, I've had my fill
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: of policemen this week, asking me where I was between
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: eight and half past, as if a man can account
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: for every minute of his own sleep. Can you not?
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, with interest. Well, no more can anybody,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: said Mr. Knot, a shade too quickly, and then, recovering, though,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: as it happens, I slept sound as a church, being
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: tired out with the journey, and heard nothing at all
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: until the maid's scream, which I don't mind telling you,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: took ten years off me. I am sure it did,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, and let the matter drop, filing away
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: only that Mr. Knot's protest had come rather before the question,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: in the manner of a man rehearsing an answer he
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: expected to need. Diana Quill she found in the small
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: lounge later that afternoon, alone, turning the pages of a
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: magazine without reading them, and sat down beside her with
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: her knitting, in the way old ladies do, expecting nothing,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: and generally receiving, for that very reason, a good deal.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: You're worried about your husband, said Miss Marple, not as
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: a question. The girl's head came up sharply. Why should
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: you say that? Because you keep looking toward the door
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: as though you expect him, and yet you don't look
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: easy when he comes in, said Miss Marple. I don't
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: ask you to tell me why, my dear. Only that
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: it is generally better to say a worry aloud to
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: someone than to carry it about alone in a strange house,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: at Christmas, with a policeman in the morning room. There
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: was a silence, and then, in a rush— as young
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: people will when an old woman has somehow made it
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: safe to do so, we haven't the money for this holiday.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: We hadn't, I mean, before we came, Simon wanted it
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: so badly, it being our first Christmas married, and he,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: he borrowed against something he oughtn't to have, to pay
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: for it, and the bill here's larger than he thought,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: what with the extra days snowed in, and I don't
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: know how he means to settle it, and now with
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: a policeman in the house asking everyone where they were,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: and what they were doing. She stopped, catching herself. It
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: sounds dreadful, put like that, as if I suspect my
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: own husband. It sounds, said Miss Marple gently, like a
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: young man who is frightened of a bill and not
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: of a murder, which are two quite different kinds of trouble,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: though I grant you they can look alike to a
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: frightened person in the small hours. Did he go out
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: at all that first night? The night before Christmas, I mean,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: or the small hours of Christmas morning? He had two baths,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: said Diana Quill miserably, as though the confession cost her something.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: The Wednesday and the Thursday both, though we're only meant
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: to the one, all of us, because of the geyser.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: I told him it looked odd, taking two when everyone
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: else was managing on one, and he said nobody would
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: notice or care, and now with all this. She twisted
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: the magazine in her lap. It was only vanity, Miss Marple.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: He does like to be clean and comfortable, and he
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: thought no one would grudge at him. I'm afraid now
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: it looks like something else. It very likely does, Miss
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: Marple agreed, to a policeman with a murder on his
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: hands and eight strangers to sort through. I should tell
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: the inspector myself if I were you, rather than let
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: him find it out and wonder why you didn't. An
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: honest vanity owned up to Freely looks a great deal
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: better— than the same vanity discovered. She said this with
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: such matter-of-fact kindness, that the girl actually smiled, a little wanly,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: and said she would, and went off to find her husband.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: And Miss Marple, left alone with her knitting, thought that
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: here was one small mystery very likely solved, and of
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: no importance whatever, to the larger one, except that it
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: had cost the child two unhappy days to carry, which was,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: in Miss Marple's long experience, exactly how most small gilts behaved, swelling,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: in private, to a size quite out of proportion to
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: their true weight, until somebody made them say the thing aloud.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: It was Ivy Coombe, encountered on the back stairs with
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: an armful of linen, who supplied the next small piece,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: offered with the freedom of a girl who did not
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: think an old lady from the front of the house
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: counted as anyone to be careful in front of.' It' s
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: shocking the extra work, miss, and no one thinking to
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: make it easier,' she said, by way of grievance rather
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: than confidence.' Mrs. Pargeters had me boiling extra water on
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: the kitchen range since Boxing Day, on account of the
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: geyser being wanted so early these mornings, though I'm sure
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know why, seeing as there's only the four
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: of them has it regular, and now she wants her
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: own bath before anyone's stirring too, which she never did
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: before Christmas.' not once in the whole time I've been here.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Does she indeed? said Miss Marple, and thought, turning it
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: over as she climbed the last of the stairs to
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: her own room, that a landlady with a guilty economy
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: of her own, a hot bath taken on the sly
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: before the guests were up, out of simple embarrassment at
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: using what she charged others for, was a very different
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: matter from a guest with blood on his conscience, and
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: that it would be as well, before the case grew
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: any more complicated, to be quite sure which of Coldhaven's
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: early risers belonged to which sort. Six. Chapter Six. What
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: the landlady would not say, Mrs. Pargeter, questioned again by
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Inspector Reeve on the matter of the geyser's morning routine,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: proved a reluctant witness in a way that interested Miss
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Marple a good deal more than a forthcoming one would
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: have done.' I light it at half-past six, same as always,'
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: she said. Standing, rather than sitting, arms folded, a woman
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: braced for an accusation she plainly feared more than she
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: would admit. And I don't stand over it counting who
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: goes in and out. That's Walter's job, the chalk marks,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: not mine. And yet, said Reeve, mild but persistent, I'm
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: told you've had extra water boiling on the range these mornings, Mrs. Pargeter,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: for a bath of your own, before the guests are up.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: That wasn't your habit before Christmas, by the maid's account.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: There was a silence, and then Mrs. Pargeter's arms unfolded,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: and something went out of her. Not guilt over a murder,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple thought, watching closely, but a smaller, older, more
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: ordinary embarrassment, the kind a proud woman feels at a
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: small dishonesty caught out in daylight. I'll tell you the
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: truth of it, Inspector, and I'll thank you not to
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: make more of it than it is, she said. I've
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: eight guests, paying for four hot baths a morning between them,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: and a geyser that gives no more than that, and
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: I've not had a proper hot bath myself since the
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: Tuesday before Christmas, because I won't take one of the
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: four that's paid for. So I've been up early, before
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Walter lights it proper for the guests, and drawn myself
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: a bath off the last of the previous evening's heat,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: that the tank holds a little of overnight, not enough
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: for a guest to notice missing, and I've said nothing
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: about it, because it's a shabby sort of economy for
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: a landlady to need, taking her own bath-water on the
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: sly like a servant, and I didn't care to have
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: it known.' On Christmas morning,' said Reeve, 'did you do
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: the same?'' I did not,' said Mrs. Pargeter, with sudden firmness.'
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: I' d not the heart for it, that morning, with the
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: trouble in the house, once we knew,' I'd my bath
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: the morning before, the Wednesday, and none since, and you
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: may ask Walter, for he near caught me at it once,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: and I begged him to say nothing to the guests,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: and he never has, being a good husband in that
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: way if no other. Reeve glanced at Miss Marple, who had,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: as usual, contrived to be present without appearing to have
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: been invited, and who said nothing at all, but inclined
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: her head very slightly and as one who finds a
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: piece of the puzzle settling into its proper corner rather
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: than the one first suspected for it. That accounts for
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: the Wednesday water, then, if it wants accounting for, Reeve
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: said afterward, when Mrs. Pargeter had gone, but not for
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Christmas morning, when the extra bath was drawn. No, Miss
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Marple agreed. On Christmas morning, I think Mrs. Pargeter is
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: telling the exact truth. which is a pleasant change in
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: a case with so much comfortable fiction in it, and
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: it clears her, I think, of the one thing that
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: might otherwise have looked badly for her. It does not
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: clear anyone else, Inspector. It only means we must look
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: elsewhere for our fifth bather, on the one morning that
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: actually matters.' She was quiet for a moment, turning her knitting,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: and then said, in the mild roundabout way that so
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: often proceeded, in her conversation, something rather sharper than it sounded.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: I wonder, Inspector, whether you have asked Mr. Loder exactly when,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: on Christmas morning, he first came down to breakfast, and
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: whether anyone can say they saw him before that hour,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: not in the passage, not on the stair, but in
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: a room, with another person, at a stated time. Reeve
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: consulted his notes. He says he came down a little
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: after eight, same as most of them, and took his bath.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: one of the four honest ones, so he says, a
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: little before that, about half-past seven. And is there anyone,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, who can say they saw him between, say,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: half-past six and half-past seven, rather than simply believing it
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: because he says so? There was not. It emerged, over
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: the remainder of that day's questioning, that half-past six to
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: half-past seven on Christmas morning was, for very ordinary reasons,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: the least witnessed hour in the entire house. Walter Pargeter,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: occupied with the geyser and the boiler downstairs, Mrs. Pargeter,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: by her own admission, not up at all that morning,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: having forgone her own bath. Ivy still asleep in the attic,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: her rising hour being seven. The guests each shut in
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: their own rooms, dressing, or still abed, none troubling to
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: note the movements of the others, because nobody, on an
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: ordinary snow-bound Christmas morning, has the smallest reason to keep
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: a private clock on his neighbours. An hour with no witnesses,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: said Reeve, half to himself, in a house with eight
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: people in it. It hardly seems possible. It is the
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: most possible thing in the world, Inspector, said Miss Marple.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: People believe houses are full of eyes because they are
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: full of people, and forget that people are, for the
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: most part, looking at their own boots, or their own worries,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: and see nothing at all of what passes six feet away.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: It is only afterward, when something has happened, that everyone remembers,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: quite sincerely, having noticed things they did not in fact
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: notice until they were asked to. She paused. I think, Inspector,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: if I were in your place, I should want to
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: know a good deal more about what proof Mrs. Vance
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: held over Mr. Loder, and how it came to be
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: locked in that desk of hers, and whether it is
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: there still. It was not. When the desk was at
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: last opened, with a spare key found among Mrs. Vance's
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: effects and the inspector's own hands turning the lock, it
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: held old letters, a will, a quantity of jewellery insurance documents, and,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: tucked at the very back in a plain envelope marked
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: only with a date twenty years gone, nothing at all.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: An envelope, empty, its flap torn rather than cut. as
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: though someone in haste, and in the dark, had opened
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: it by feel alone, and taken what was inside, and
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: left the husk behind for want of time, to do better. 7.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Chapter 7. The Telegram That Could Not Go. It was Mr. Frayne,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: of all the household the least suspected, and the most
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: privately unhappy, who precipitated the small crisis of the 29th,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: by announcing at breakfast, in a voice that shook very slightly,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: that he intended to walk to the crossroads that morning,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: roads or no roads, and send a telegram, and that
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: nothing anyone said would prevent him.' To whom, Mr. Frayne?'
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: asked the inspector, who had come early and was breakfasting,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: by invitation, at the family table, the better to observe
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: the household at its least guarded hour.' To my bishop,'
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: said Mr. Frayne, and then Seeing that this answer satisfied nobody, added,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: with the particular bitterness of a man confessing something he
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: had meant to keep private a good while longer, I
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: came to Coldhaven, Inspector, to decide whether I could go
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: on in my calling at all, having lost, over the
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: past year, very nearly all the faith a man needs
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: to stand up in a pulpit and mean what he says.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: I meant to spend a quiet week deciding it alone,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: and instead— I have spent it watching a murder investigated
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: six feet from where I sleep, and I find I
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: have decided after all, and I should like to tell
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: my bishop so before I lose my nerve again. There
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: was an uncomfortable silence, of the kind that attends any
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: sudden true thing said at a breakfast table, and then
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: Inspector Reeve, not unkindly, said that he was sorry to
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: hear it, and that the telegram would have to wait
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: until he had finished with his questions for the day.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: because nobody was to leave the house without his knowledge,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: until the case had moved further along, roads or no roads.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: It was this refusal, small and procedural as it was,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: that seemed to unsettle the household more than anything since
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: the discovery of the body itself, for it made plain,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: in a way that two days of polite waiting had not,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: that they were, all of them, prisoners of the snow
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: and of the inspector's patience together, and that nobody, not
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: the vicar with his crisis of faith, not the Quills
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: with their debts, not Mr. Knot with his failing business,
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: not Mr. Loader with his changed name, was going anywhere
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: until Reeve chose to let them. It was that same
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: afternoon that the mid-stay incident occurred which Miss Marple, afterward,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: considered the true turning point of the case, though it
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: seemed at the time no more than a small domestic flurry. Mr. Loder,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: informed that the telephone line to Cromer had at last
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: been restored sufficiently for outgoing calls, asked to use it,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: on the stated grounds of reassuring his sister as to
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: his safety, and was overheard by Ivy, who had no
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: scruple whatever about listening at doors where a murder was concerned,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: whatever her scruples about early baths, asking, in a low
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: and urgent voice, for a Mr. Silito, and saying, when connected,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: it's Bradstock. No, listen, if anyone asks after that business
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: in 38, you know nothing, you've heard nothing, and if
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: the papers were ever in Vance's hands, they're gone now.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: Do you understand me? Gone. Before catching sight of Ivy,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: in the passage, and ringing off very fast, with a
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: smile that did not reach his eyes. Ivy, torn between
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: duty and terror, reported this within the hour to Mrs. Pargeter,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: who reported it, white-faced, to the inspector, and by evening Mr.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: Loder found himself once more in the small morning room,
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: this time with the sergeant standing rather nearer the door
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: than before. You told me, Mr. Loder, said Reeve, that
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: your change of name had nothing to do with Mrs. Vance.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: I told you it had nothing to do with her murder,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: said Loder, and for the first time since his arrival
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: at Coldhaven, something of the ease had gone out of
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: his manner, leaving underneath it a man considerably older and
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: and more tired than the one who had shaken everybody's
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: hand in the hall a week before. There is a difference, Inspector,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: though I don't expect you to see it kindly. In 1938,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: I was convicted, under the name of Bradstock, of a
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: fraud against an insurance office. A stupid, desperate thing, done young,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: and paid for since with fourteen years of honest work,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: under a name I chose because I could not bear
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: to carry the old one about with me any longer.' Mrs.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: Vance knew Bradstock. She had known him at the time, slightly,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: and she recognized Loda the moment she walked into this hall,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: and she meant, I am quite sure, to make me
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: pay for her silence a second time, in whatever coin
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: she chose to name, and I will tell you plainly
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: that I hated her for it, and I am not
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: ashamed to say so now that she is dead. But
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: I did not kill her, Inspector. A man does not
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: commit murder over an old debt he has already half
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: decided to simply pay. And yet, said Reeve, you were
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: seen with your hand at your collar not once but
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: twice in this house. At moments a man does not
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: generally reach for his collar unless he is telling something
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: less than the whole truth. Loder said nothing to that,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: which Miss Marple, listening from her chair with the particular
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: stillness she reserved for the moments that mattered most, thought
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: was in its own way an answer. I should like
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: to know, she said, into the silence, in her mildest voice,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: whether Mr. Loder can tell us where he was, precisely,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: between half-past six and half-past seven, on Christmas morning, and
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: whether there is anyone at all, not a guest believing him, Mr. Loder,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: but a fact, a sound, a thing seen, that can
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: place him anywhere other than his own room. Loder looked
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: at her for a long moment. and something in his face,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: not quite fear, Miss Marple thought, but the particular exhaustion
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: of a man who has been running from one name
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: for fourteen years and finds he has no strength left
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: to run from anything else, seemed almost to give way.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: I was in my room, he said at last, alone.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: I heard the geyser start up along the landing, and
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: I lay in bed a good while after, thinking about
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: what she meant to do to me, and hating her,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: as I've said, and then I went along and had
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: my bath, and it was cold, because I'd lain too
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: long thinking instead of going promptly, and I came down
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: to breakfast and said nothing about the cold water, because
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: a man does not care to explain to strangers that
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: he lay in bed hating a woman for half an
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: hour on Christmas morning. That is the whole of it, Inspector.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: It is not a pretty story, but it is not
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: a murderer's story either. It might, said Reeve, not unkindly,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: Be exactly a murderer's story, Mr. Loder, told by a
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: clever man who knows which parts to admit to and
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: which to leave out. He did not arrest him that evening,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: but he set the sergeant, quietly, to watch the stairs
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: that night, and Miss Marple, going up to bed, thought
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: again of Tom Headley and the one broken skin of
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: ice on a dozen water-butts, and thought that the case
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: had very nearly, but not quite, come to the point
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: where the ice would break. 8. Chapter 8. A Small
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: Story About Tunbridge Wells. It was two evenings later, with
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: the road still closed, and the household grown so accustomed
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: to the Inspector's daily presence that his arrival no longer
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: produced the small flurry it once had, that Miss Marple,
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: sitting with the Herrick sisters over a hand of bazooka
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: that nobody's heart was really in, said something that afterward
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: Constance Herrick swore she had thought nothing of at the time,
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: though she remembered every word of it for years. They
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: had been speaking, idly, of nothing in particular, the price
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: of coal, a niece's engagement, the likelihood of the roads
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: clearing by New Year, when Miss Beatrice Herrick remarked, apropos
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: of some small vanity of her sister's about a hat,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: that Constance had always liked to be thought better dressed
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: than she could afford, even as a girl, do you remember,
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: when we were nothing but children at Tunbridge Wells, and
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: you used to borrow mother's brooch and swear you'd bought
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: it yourself? Something in the ordinary domestic malice of this remark,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: the small, comfortable cruelty of sisters who have needled each
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: other for sixty years and will go on doing so
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: until one of them dies, made Miss Marple's needles pause
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: for the smallest fraction of a second, and her eyes went,
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: not to either Herrick's sister, but somewhere past them, to
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: a middle distance that had nothing to do with the
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: room at all.' Forgive me,' she said, after a moment.'
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: in a voice a shade more distant than her usual one.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: You put me in mind of something. There was a
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: young man in my own village, a long time ago now,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: Tom Headley, the gardener's boy I mentioned to the inspector,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: in point of fact, though I don't believe I told
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: the whole of it to him. He borrowed things too,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: you know, in his way, not brooches, but small liberties,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: an extra half-day's leave here, a rabbit or two from
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: the squire's warren there, and he was never once caught
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: at the large things, because he was clever about them,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: but he was caught, in the end, over the smallest
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: thing imaginable, a broken skin of ice on a water-butt,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: on a morning when every other butt on the estate
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: was frozen solid and untouched. It was not the poaching
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: that undid him, in the end, it was the washing
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: up afterward. People will go to a great deal of
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: trouble to commit a wrong, you know, and then trip
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: over the small, ordinary business of tidying up after it.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: because tidying is not exciting, and requires a clear head,
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: which a person who has just done something dreadful very
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: rarely has. How very curious, said Constance Herrick, not much interested,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: and returned to her cards, but Beatrice Herrick, who had
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: a sharper eye than her sister for other people's meanings,
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: looked at Miss Marple a moment longer, and said nothing
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: at all. Miss Marple herself sat very still for some
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: minutes after that, her knitting idle in her lap, turning
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: the little memory over as one turns a stone to
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: see what lies beneath it, and it was some while later,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: alone in her own room with the lamp turned low,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: that the whole of it came together in her mind
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: with the particular soundless click she had learned, over a
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: very long life, to trust absolutely. It was not the poaching,
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: it was the washing up afterward. Ivo Loder had bathed
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: on Christmas morning, Everyone agreed on that, Loder himself most
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: of all, and there was no reason on earth to
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: doubt so plain and unflattering an admission. A man does
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: not invent a story about lying in bed hating a
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: woman unless it is at least broadly true. He had bathed,
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: and the water had gone cold on him, because, so
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: he said, he had lain too long thinking before he
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: went along the landing. but a man who has merely
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: lain in bed thinking does not need to bathe at all.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: Thinking leaves no mark upon a man that hot water
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: is required to remove. A man bathes, urgently, before breakfast,
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: in water gone cold, rather than wait an hour for
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: it to heat again, when he has something upon his
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: person that he cannot carry down to breakfast and cannot
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: explain if seen. Not the ordinary staleness of a sleepless night,
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: but something specific, something that clung, and the chalk mark.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: That was the part, Miss Marple thought, that the poor
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: man had not been clever enough to leave alone, precisely
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: because he was not, at bottom, a clever man in
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: the way that mattered. He was only a frightened one,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: running on the old habits of fourteen years of careful respectability,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: in which a bath was always recorded, always chalked, because
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: that was simply how the house was run, and a
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: man does what a house asks of him even in
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: the middle of catastrophe, especially in the middle of catastrophe,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: because it is the one small ordinary thing his hands
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: know how to do when the rest of him has
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: gone to pieces. He had smothered Mrs. Vance some time
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: before Walter lit the geyser at half-past six, or very
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: shortly after, while the house still slept, had gone back
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: to his own room to wait out the worst of
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: the shaking, as murderers must, before he could trust his
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: legs to carry him along a landing without staggering, and
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: had then gone, at last, urgently, to wash, in water
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: that had by then gone entirely cold, because the four
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: honest bathers of the morning had not yet begun their queue,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: and would not for the better part of an hour, and,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: out of the same trained fright habit that made a
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: man of fourteen years respectability always account properly for what
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: he used had picked up walter's chalk from the shelf
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: where it lay and marked the door exactly as an
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: honest guest would have done, because some deep unthinking part
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: of him could not bear, even in the middle of
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: a murder, to be thought a man who took a
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: bath and did not own to it. It was, Miss
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: Marple thought, turning down her lamp at last, a very
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: small mistake indeed, and a very human one, and it
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: was exactly the kind of mistake that the Tom Hedleys
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: of the world had always made, since long before Coldhaven,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: and would go on making, she supposed, for as long
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: as people went on doing dreadful things in the dark,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: and then, from nothing more sinister than habit, tidying up
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: afterward as though nothing had happened at all. 9. Chapter 9.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: The Sum of Five Miss Marple did not go to
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: Inspector Reeve that night, nor the next morning. She had learned,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: over a great many years and a great many cases,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: that a policeman told a thing too soon. before he
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: has gathered his own proof around it. Will very often
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: refused to believe it simply for having come from an
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: old woman's memory of a gardener's boy rather than from
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: his own methodical labour, and that the surer way always
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: was to let him arrive at the last short step
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: himself with only the smallest push at his elbow. She
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: waited instead. until the morning the roads were at last
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: pronounced passable as far as the village, and Reeve announced
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: his intention of driving to Cromer that afternoon to consult
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: with his superiors on whether the evidence yet in hand
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: would support a charge, which was, Miss Marple understood perfectly well,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: a policeman's way of saying that he had a very
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: strong suspicion and not quite enough to hang it on.'
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: I wonder, Inspector,' she said, catching him alone for a
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: moment in the hall, with her coat already half-buttoned for
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: a short turn in the thin morning sun, whether you
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: have added up, quite exactly, the baths of Christmas morning
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: in the way one adds a column of figures, rather
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: than simply feeling, as I am sure we all do,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: that the sum comes to something odd.' I' ve the statements,'
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: said Reeve, a little wearily.' Four guests owned to a
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: bath that morning in the ordinary hours, Mr. Knott, the
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: two Miss Herrick's between them sharing the queue, and young Mr. Quill,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: though his wife tells me he'd already had two the
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: days before, and oughtn't rightly to count for a third,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: which is his own vanity and none of my business.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: That's four honest ones. Mr. Loder makes a fifth, by
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: his own admission, though his was cold. That's five bathers total,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple.' for a geyser that gives four hot ones,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: and Walter's own testimony that a fifth, taken after, would
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: indeed run cold, which is exactly what Loder says happened
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: to him. Precisely so, said Miss Marple. Five bathers, one geyser,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: four hot baths, and one cold one, and every single
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: fact fitting together as neatly as a good seam. That
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: is what troubles me, Inspector, if I may say so
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: without impertinence. It fits too well. A guilty man's story
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: generally has one loose thread in it somewhere, however carefully
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: he has sewn it, because he has had to invent
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: the whole cloth rather than simply report what happened to him.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: And Mr. Loder's story has no loose thread at all, because,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: I think, very nearly all of it is true. He
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: did lie in bed a while. He did go along
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: and find the water cold. He is not lying about
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: the bath, Inspector. He is lying, I think, about what
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: he did in the twenty minutes before it. And the
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: coldness of the water is not the thing that damns him.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: It is the chalk mark that damns him, and I
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: do not think you have asked him about that directly,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: because it seemed a small thing beside the rest. Walter's
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: chalk mark, said Reeve slowly. The fifth one. that Walter
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: swears he never made. Just so, said Miss Marple. An
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: innocent man who bathes in cold water and is out
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: of temper about it, on a morning when a woman
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: has died along the landing and his mind is on
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: nothing else, does not generally think to reach for a
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: stub of chalk lying on a shelf and record his
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: own bath for the household's ledger, Inspector, because an innocent
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: man in a house of that much horror has other
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: things entirely on his mind, and besides, he has no
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: reason to think anyone will ever ask him whether he
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: chalked it or not. Only a man in the grip
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: of a very old, very trained habit, a habit of years,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: of always, always accounting properly for what he has taken
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: and used, so that no one may ever say of
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: him again what was once said of him under another name,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: reaches for the chalk at a moment like that, without
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: even quite deciding to, the way your own hand reaches
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: for a light switch in a dark room you have
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: lived in for twenty years, without your head having anything
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: to do with it at all. It is not the
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: murder that gave him away, Inspector, and it is not even, quite,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: the bath. It is the tidying up afterward. It very
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: often is. Reeve was silent for a long moment, turning
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: this over, and then said, with the air of a
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: man who has just seen a door he has been
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: pushing at for a week swing suddenly and easily open,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: the chalk. Of course, Pargeter never for one moment believed
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: he'd made that mark himself, and I put it down
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: to an old man's forgetfulness and didn't press it, because
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: it seemed the smallest fact in the whole case. He
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: looked at her. You're telling me a man doesn't sign
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: for a theft he thinks no one will ever ask
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: him about?' I am telling you,' said Miss Marple,' that
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: a man who has spent fourteen years being scrupulously honest'
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: in order to bury a single dishonesty from his youth'
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: cannot stop being scrupulous even in the one hour of
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: his life' when scruple is the very last thing that
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: could save him.' It is in its way quite a
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: sad thing, Inspector,' though I don't ask you to let
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: it move you out of doing your duty.' Reeve did not,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: in the end, need to press very hard.' confronted that
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: same afternoon with the chalk itself, a plain stub, sent
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: up to Cromer and found under a magnifying glass to carry,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: faintly but distinctly, a thumbprint that matched no honest bather's
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: account of where he had stood to make his own mark,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: but matched exactly the angle a man reaching hastily from
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: the doorway rather than standing properly before the cupboard would
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: have left. Ivo Loder sat for a long while in
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: the small morning room without speaking. His hand gone, at last,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: quite still upon the table in front of him, no
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: longer reaching for his collar at all, because there was
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: nothing left, Miss Marple supposed, watching from her chair by
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: the door, for a man to hide once the last
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: small lie has been taken from him, along with all
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: the larger ones. I only meant to frighten her, he
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: said at last, to no one in particular, in the
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: flat voice of a man who has stopped performing for
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: an audience because he has finally understood there is no
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: longer any point. I went in only to ask her,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: one last time, to let the matter drop, and she
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: laughed at me, Inspector, in the dark, in that particular
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: way she had, and told me she would see me
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: broken a second time and enjoy it rather more than
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: the first, and I put my hand on the pillow
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: only to stop her laughing, only that, and then I
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: could not seem to take it away again until she
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: had stopped moving, and I have not, I think, been
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: entirely myself since. TEN Chapter 10. What the cold water proved,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: Inspector Reeve charged Ivo Loder, properly and formally, on the
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: morning of the last day of the old year, with
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: the sergeant standing by and Constable Digweed brought over specially
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: from the village to witness it, as though the size
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: of the occasion demanded more uniforms than Coldhaven usually saw
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: in a twelve-month. and the household gathered, without quite meaning to,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: in the hall to see him taken out to the
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: car that had at last got through from Cromer, nobody
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: speaking much, everybody watching. Loder himself said very little. At
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: the door, however, he paused, and looked back at the room,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: at Mrs. Pargeter, at the Quills standing close together, at
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: the Herrick sisters, at Mr. Frayne, who had sent his
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: telegram at last and looked, Miss Marple thought, oddly at
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: peace for a man who had just resigned his living,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: and his eye came to rest, last of all, on
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: Miss Marple herself, sitting quietly in her usual corner, with
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: her knitting in her lap. I don't know how you
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: knew it, he said, not unkindly, more as a man
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: puzzling over a conjuring trick than as a man addressing
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: his accuser. The chalk, I mean. I never thought twice
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: about it. I don't believe I even decided to do it.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: My hand simply did it. the way it's done a
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: hundred mornings before, in a hundred other houses, always squaring
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: the account, always leaving nothing owing. That is very often
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: how the truth comes out, Mr. Loder, said Miss Marple,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: not unkindly either. Not through cleverness, on either side, so
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: much as through habit. The things people do without deciding to,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: because they have done them so many times before that
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: the doing of them no longer passes through the part
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: of the mind that lies. I am very sorry for it.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: I think you might have gone on a great many
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: more years an honest man, if she had let you.''
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: She might have let me,' said Loda,' if I had
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: let her frighten me quietly, the way she meant to,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: instead of minding so much. I minded too much, Miss Marple.'
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: That was my whole trouble, from the very start, in
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: 1938 and now again. I minded too much what people
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: thought of the name I carried, and in the end
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: it was the name that carried me here. He said
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: nothing further and went out, between Reeve and the sergeant,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: into the thin bright morning, and the car took him
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: away down the lane that had at last, after eight days,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: been dug clear enough to bear its weight. and the
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: household stood for a while in the hall not speaking,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: the way people do when something has been resolved, and
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: there is nothing left to say about it that does
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: not feel, somehow, too small for the size of what
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: has happened. It was left to Inspector Reeve, over a
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: final cup of tea before his own departure that afternoon,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: to ask Miss Marple the question that had evidently been
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: troubling him since the arrest— in the manner of a
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: man who dislikes leaving a case with any part of
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: it still unexplained even to himself. I understand the chalk
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: mark well enough now, he said, and the cold water,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: and the twenty minutes he couldn't account for. What I
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: don't rightly understand, Miss Marple, is how you came to
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: be looking at the geyser at all, from the very
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: first morning, when the rest of us were looking at motives,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: and letters, and old convictions. I looked at the geyser, Inspector.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, pouring him a second cup without being asked,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: because it was the one thing in the entire house
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: that could not lie, and could not be talked round,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: and did not care in the least whose feelings it hurt.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: People will tell you a great many things, some of
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: them true and some of them not, and a clever
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: liar can very often make the false things sound a
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: good deal more convincing than the true ones, because he
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: has had time to polish them. but a tank of
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: water holds exactly what it holds, and gives out exactly
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: what it gives, four baths and no more, morning after morning,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: and it does not care who is comfortable and who
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: is not, and it does not change its story to
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: suit the company. When Walter told me, on the very
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: first evening, before anyone had died at all, that his
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: geyser gave four hot baths and no more, I thought
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: to myself that here was one fact in this house
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: I could entirely trust whatever anybody said about anything else,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: and I kept a private eye on it from that
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: evening onward, the way one keeps an eye on a
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: clock in a room full of people who might, for
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: their own reasons, be inclined to disagree about the time.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: And the village boy, said Reeve, Tom Hedley. Was there
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: truly such a person, or was that a story you
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: told to lead Loder along, if you'll forgive my asking? Oh,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: there was truly such a person, said Miss Marple, with
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: a small smile that suggested the question rather amused her.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: There is very nearly always such a person, Inspector, if
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: one has lived long enough in one place and paid attention. St.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: Mary Mead is not, I think, so very different from Coldhaven,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: or from anywhere else people gather together and imagine themselves
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: for a little while to be strangers to one another.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: We are all, at bottom, exactly the same handful of
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: habits and vanities and small dishonesties, wearing different clothes and
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: speaking with different accents. And the same mistakes catch us out,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: over and over, in the same tiny, unglamorous ways. A
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: broken skin of ice, a chalk mark nobody asked for,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: a bath taken and honestly recorded when the honesty would
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: have served far better as silence. She sipped her own tea.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: I find it rather a comfort, in a sad sort
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: of way, Inspector. It means that people, on the whole,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: cannot help behaving like themselves, however dreadful the thing they
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: have just done, and it is that, far more than
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: any cleverness of mine, that generally catches them in the end.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: Reeve left that afternoon, with the last of his men,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: and by evening the roads to Cromer were opened properly
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: for the first time in eight days, and Mr. Knott announced,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: with the particular relief of a man whose business could
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: not afford any more delay, that he would be on
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: the first bus in the morning, and the quills, hand
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: in hand once more without any anxiety in the clasp,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: went in to speak to Mrs. Pargeter about their bill,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: which she had already, without being asked, quietly reduced on
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: account of all the upset, a kindness that made young Mrs.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: Quill cry a little, from relief in the privacy of
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: the stairs. The geezer, Walter reported that evening, with something
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: of his old pride restored, was running exactly as it
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: always had, four hot baths of a morning, and not
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: one more, the chalk marks going up clean and honest
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: each day, four and no fifth, the tank keeping, as
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: it always had, its own small unbending account of the truth.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: The last morning of the old year came in bright
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: and hard, the sky the particular scoured blue that follows
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: a long snow, and the guests of Coldhaven, most of
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: them now free to leave, and several of them already gone,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: gathered for a final breakfast that felt, for the first
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: time in a week, almost like an ordinary one. Mr. Frayne,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: who had decided, in the end, not to leave his
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: calling after all, but to ask his bishop only for
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: a period of rest and reconsideration rather than a resignation,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: seemed lighter than he had at any point in the
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: preceding week. and told Miss Marple, over the marmalade, that
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: he thought he had needed, more than anything, simply to
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: say the frightening thing aloud to somebody, and that having
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: done so, it had shrunk, quite remarkably, to a size
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: a man could carry. That is very often the way
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: of it, said Miss Marple. Fears grow enormous in a
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: locked room, Mr. Frayne, very much like anything else left
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: too long without air. The Herrick sisters were making their
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: farewells with the particular briskness of women, who had spent
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: a week in close quarters, and were ready, without saying so,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: for a little solitude apiece. And it was Beatrice, drawing
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: on her gloves in the hall, who said to Miss Marple,
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: in a lowered voice, I don't suppose you'll tell me,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: before we go, whether that story of yours, the gardener's boy,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: was quite what set you thinking, or whether there was
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: something else besides. It was very nearly the whole of it,
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple. Though I will confess, since you ask,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: that your sister's little remark about the borrowed brooch helped
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: it along rather more than she will ever know, and
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: I have not the smallest intention of telling her so,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: because I think some things are more useful left exactly
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: where they fall. Beatrice Herrick smiled, for the first time
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: all week without a trace of anxiety in it, and
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: said that she supposed some things were, and went out
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: to the waiting car without another word about it. Mrs. Pargeter,
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: seeing the last of her Christmas guests away with the
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: particular exhaustion of a landlady who has survived a murder
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: in her own house and lived to tell the tale
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: to every visitor for the next ten years, paused at
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: the door to press an extra slice of seed-cake, wrapped
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: in paper, into Miss Marple's hand for the journey, and said,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: a little awkwardly, that she hoped Miss Marple would not
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: think too badly of Coldhaven for what had happened under
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: its roof. I shall think of it, said Miss Marple,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: as a house with a very honest geyser, Mrs. Pargeter,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: which is rather more than one can say for a
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: great many establishments, and I mean that as the compliment
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: it is intended to be. There remained one small piece
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: of unfinished business, which Miss Marple attended to privately before
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: the last car came for her. She sought out Simon Quill,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: found him settling the account at the little desk in
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: the lounge. The very desk— though its darker history had
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: been quietly removed, along with poor Mrs. Vance's effects, and
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: said to him, without preamble, that she understood a young
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: husband might, in a strange house at Christmas, be forgiven
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: a small vanity about hot water that had caused rather
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: more trouble to his conscience than it deserved.' Diana told you,'
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: he said, going rather red.' She told me because she
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: was carrying it alone, and it had grown too heavy,'
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: said Miss Marple. I only wanted to say, Mr. Quill,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: since we are not likely to meet again, that a
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: man who spends beyond his means for his wife's first
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: Christmas married is not, in my long experience, a man
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: to be ashamed of, whatever a bill collector might think
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: of the arithmetic. I hope you will tell her so yourself,
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: rather more often than you have been doing, and I
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: hope the two of you will forget Coldhaven's less pleasant
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: business a good deal faster than you will remember its
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: nicer one. He thanked her. with the particular fervour of
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: a young man greatly relieved, and went off to find
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: his wife. And Miss Marple, gathering her own things at last,
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: the two novels largely unread, the knitting, considerably advanced, in
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: wool the colour of a winter sea, the wrapped seed-cake, reflected,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: waiting in the hall for the last car of the day,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: that the case had closed exactly as such cases generally did,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: with one wrong done, answered for, with several small wrongs
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: aired and forgiven, and with one thread left, as such
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: things always were, not quite tidy. For she never did learn,
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: nor greatly wish to, what had become of the fraud
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: papers Loda had torn from the envelope, and presumably burned
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: or buried somewhere in the snow, that no Thor would
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: ever be thorough enough to find. and she thought that
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: perhaps it was as well that some small things remained,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: at the end of a case, permanently and honestly unaccounted for,
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: the way even the most careful ledger will always show,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: somewhere in its column, one figure that nobody can quite explain.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: The car came at half-past eleven. Miss Marple thanked Mrs.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: Pargeter once more for a memorable Christmas, meant it more
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: sincerely than the landlady could have guessed, and was driven
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: away down a lane newly clear of snow, toward a train,
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: and a nephew who would ask a great many questions
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: she had no intention of answering in full, and a
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: village of her own, waiting, as villages do, exactly as
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: she had left it. The End